A call to action doing critical GIS in a community-engaged introductory GIS course

Community Engaged Learning (CEL) is a pedagogical approach that involves students, community partners, and instructors working together to analyze and address community-identified concerns through experiential learning. Implementing community-engagement in geography courses and, specifically, in GIS courses is not new. However, while students enrolled in CEL GIS courses critically reflect on social and spatial inequalities, GIS tools themselves are mostly applied in uncritical ways. Yet, CEL GIS courses can specifically help students understand GIS as a socially constructed technology which can not only empower but also disempower the community. This contribution presents the experiences from a community-engaged introductory GIS course, taught at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) in Virginia (USA) in Spring ’24. It shows how the course helped students gain a conceptual understanding of what is GIS, how to use it, and valuable software skills, while also reflecting about their own privileges, how GIS can (dis)empower the community, and their own role as a GIS analyst. Ultimately, the paper shows how the course supported positive changes in the community, equity in education, reciprocity in university/community relationships, and student civic-mindedness.